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China’s “Ant Tribe” Lives In The World’s Most Cramped Apartments

Photos from the fringes of China’s biggest cities. Toilets built under bed lofts, groups of renters crammed in underground windowless rooms — how the great migrations towards cities create cramped living conditions.

A viral comic about the plight of China’s underemployed urban young living in very cramped quarters

Many of them are migrant workers toughing it out in China’s most desirable cities, though Hukou residency quotas mean many cannot become legal city residents or partake in their low-income housing and public services. In Beijing alone, an estimated 100,000 of them live in windowless underground hovels, while elsewhere they live in buses, shipping containers, and dangerously cramped bunks. They are China’s “rat people” and “ant tribe,” a category that includes older workers priced out of above-ground apartments and, increasingly, underemployed college graduates who have to share a bedroom with six strangers to make rent (“rat people” refer to people living in underground rentals, while “ant people” refer to recent grads in cramped quarters).

The photos below show how blue and white collar migrants alike are getting shut out from the cities’ official Hukou resident system (which the government plans to reform) and priced out of the cores of cities into to the fringes and undergrounds.

A resident waits to use the communal bathroom and washing area of a basement hostel on the western outskirts of Beijing.Sim Chi Yin / VII Mentor Program

n the communal kitchen of a condo in western Beijing, the landlord posts a rent collection notice: “starting August, rent will be due on the first day of each month. New renters are exempt. “Sim Chi Yin / VII Mentor Program

An employee of a mail delivery service showers under her bunk bed at her rental.

Two employees of a construction material company share an apartment in Wuhan city. An open shower (and what looks to be a squat toilet) sits at the base of a ladder leading to the top bunk.

Master Yan, who declined to give his full name, teaches and practices Chinese martial arts in an air-raid shelter basement with 130 rooms for rent.Sim Chi Yin / VII Mentor Program

Parents cook at a public kitchen of a rental building in Hefei, Anhui province.Jianan Yu / Reuters

Nimen Hao,

please read the summary below on migration, education and social mobility in China.

Chinese internal rural-to-urban migration and the rise of Chinese wealth and power

The wealth and power of Western states like the US, Canada and the UK were built, in part, on the labour of rural to urban migrants in Europe, and on colonial migrant labour during the 17th to 20th centuries. Contemporary Chinese wealth and power are built on the rural to urban migration of the era of Chairman Mao and then the Reform Era, in what is sometimes called the third (digital) and fourth (cyber-physical) industrial revolutions.

Those revolutions led to great increase in wealth and urbanisation:

Shenzhen is a good example of the rapid urbanisation. In the pre-Reform Era Shenzhen was a fishing village area. It had a population of approximately 30,000 people (1979). Now Shenzhen is a city with a population of 18-20 million people. 90 percent of Shenzhen-dwellers are internal immigrants. The population grew so rapidly because Shenzhen became very successful as a Special Economic Zone under the Reform strategy.

The rural and urban sides of Shenzhen. Thirty years ago it all looked like the farms on the left side of this photo

Many choose to migrate from the farms to the cities and sojourn (move back and forth), or try to settle there.

Researcher Min Liu explains that much of the rural-to-urban migration of Chinese women relates to gender inequality, as the rural employment, education and lifestyle choices for women are highly restrictive.

In her interviews with rural migrant women in Beijing, researcher Tamara Jacka found their motivations (for migration included not just money, but also travel, escape, “changing one’s fate” and self-development.

The rural/urban residence divide

Historically, once assigned a residential location, individuals could not elect to change it. In the Maoist era holding an urban hukou gave a access to food, housing, public health, education, pensions and other basic life necessities provided by the state, and many types of urban jobs. In contrast, the rural population was basically outside the state welfare system.

These days Chinese citizens still generally required live in the place where their “hukou” is kept, but can apply to change it.

Citizens can only buy housing in the place of official residence

Chinese state committed to granting urban hukou to migrant workers in small towns and cities (by 2020), but not megacities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen.

Migrant workers in some cities can apply for temporary residence permits which give them some welfare rights for limited periods

Migrant workers were known as the ‘floating population’ because of their temporary and precarious status even if they have lived in cities for a long time.

In the cities, they often experience inequalities of income, health and education because they lack urban household registration (under the hùkou system).

Even when rural migrants do well in the cities, their rural migrant status may still prevent them from competing successfully with city residents.

Geographical movement, social mobility, existential mobility

People often move throughout China to make more money, sometimes by doing business, sometimes by gaining better employment, sometimes by investing in property. These days they also move for education, with the hope that education will lead to better jobs and therefore more money.

More money enables social mobility, raising your position in life by purchasing more or better things, and by being able to use your money for filial support (for example, supporting parents and other family members, raising your own family).

Migration also involves existential mobility, for example the feeling of joy many migrants experience when they feel they are on an upward journey, and conversely escaping the feeling of being stuck (or abject) and not being able “to move on” with (progress) your life, to self-develop.

For many young Chinese people, getting a job that pays enough to support family is not just successful social mobility but existential mobility, a rite of passage into successful adulthood.

For some people, geographical migration is not necessary for social success (or social mobility towards success), nor for existential mobility. For many others it has seemed necessary even if the actual results of migration have been disappointing.

Ant people = Mangliu?

People’s ability to pursue social and existential mobility are limited by rural/urban (hukou), suzhi, guanxi and other forms of status inequality.

We can see how this structures life chances if we consider the different but comparable situations of migrant workers and migrant students/graduates during the rapid growth, urbanization and inequality of the reform (and post reform era)

Uneducated migrants working in construction and services in China’s cities are obviously not the same as migrant university students (students who migrated to another city to study). But both groups suffer from comparable desires for upward social and existential mobility, and pressure/stress (yali).

Migrant workers’ predicament:

Migrant workers are barred from the benefits of household residence rights, or suffer restricted rights under temporary residence permits. If they migrate to the cities without permits they are regarded as an illegal floating population (liudong renkou). The hukou system helps to ensure that business has a constant cheap and flexible supply of surplus labour (it is cheap, in part, because the state does not have to provide the welfare benefits it provides to urban residents).

in the past were stigmatized as mangliu (blind flow), regarded as backwards, non-modern, uneducated and overly-conservative (incl. sexist). If suzhi ??means “quality”, then rural migrants are regarded a low not high, non-educated rather than educated, backwards rather than modern.

often had to abandon children to the care of grandparents in order to support family by working and making more money in cities than they could in the rural areas

Many university graduates share the predicament of migrant workers:

disadvantaged by the migration laws of the household registration system (hukou).

stigmatized by the discourse on population quality (suzhi)

can suffer precarious employment/low level employment (incl. manual labour, casual service work), as college graduates are outnumbering the available white collar jobs. Rising unemployment among college graduates has seen many of them sharing the fate of migrant workers, living in poor conditions in the cities’ suburbs, with low income or no jobs, yet reluctant to return home ’empty-handed’.

Lian Si calls them an “ant army”, writing “bees, as they fly, give the impression of upward mobility, while ants always seem down on earth, stuck to the ground”.

challenged by economic & moral dilemmas in living up to their xiao (filial responsibility) as members of the one child generation. Parents have invested in their child’s care and education (yang), and the child is expected to care for her/his parents as they age.

Historically, education has been the path to upwards social mobility. Parents, the state and students all invest in this education-desire. There is an idea that the national college education exams, (gao kao) provides some degree of fairness, wherein rural students can achieve high grades and climb the social ladder. But the idea that social mobility can be obtained through higher education is often a fantasy reserved, in actuality, for elite families. In practice, as everyone knows, it takes money and connections to have access to the best high-schools which give the better chances of gaining entry to a good university.

For example, Researchers observe that many rural graduates (bìyè sheng) from Beijing universities work in low-pay jobs because they are not regarded as having good “quality” (suzhi) by professional employers, and lack good connections (Guanxì).

Nimen Hao,

we’re nearing the end part of the semester and its time to focus on your assessed work.

Throughout the semester we’ve focused on the theme of representation. I’ve introduced you to the cultural studies approach to language and representation, which draws on semiotics and post-structuralist theory. This approach involves the main idea that language is not mimetic, nor an expression of intentions, but something that is made (constructed).

We looked at the way representations are coded and contested, in terms of race, gender, and sometimes in terms of class (more on this next week). We looked at how representations (and representational systems) could be coded on the basis of different principles, like difference, or sequence, or affinity.

We looked at a wide variety of representations from journalism, advertising, film, political discourse and social media.

For your assignment, you will work in your teams to produce a podcast discussion examining how something/someone is represented.

Let me tell you a little about the assignment, and then you can do some initial brainstorming and planning in your small groups.

Team Podcasts due on or before Sunday June 16

Aim: to produce a podcast discussion of the way something/someone is represented in your teams

Assessment basis: the podcast should be interesting, demonstrate strong critical thinking and be informative

English expression: It should be well-expressed. with an appropriately rich vocabulary (it doesn’t have to be grammatically perfect, but if there are so many errors that it distracts from your communication then you will lose marks)

Style/tone: it may be serious, lighthearted or even funny. Any style or tone is fine, but you will be judged on how well the the style works.

Individual contributions to the team: Each team member will be judge on her/his contribution. Each person should speak between 3-6 minutes (over the whole of the podcast). Team, ideally, should be between 2-3 people.

Formats and submitting:

MP4 or similar audio files will be fine for audio. Any common video format should be fine too (I will ask for your help if there are any playback/recording issues)

Submit to me via wechat or email shabbycheek@protonmail.com by or before June 16.

include the transcript (as a word doc) with the speakers’ names/initials at the beginning of their sentences, like

Enrich student’s descriptive and conceptual vocabulary and self-expression, developing the spoken word reviewing and reporting and exchange of point of view skills

builds upon class using online contemporary Chinese art resources to stimulate and develop students spoken word reviewing skills (tying in with the literature courses developing students’ written English reviewing skills)

further develops team work skills (exchanging a point of view, developing agreements, cooperating on an agreed aim) required for this semester’s spoken word assessment. Students will attend in the groups they use for their assessed teamwork.

Logistics

Each class will attend the Arts District in groups of 12 students or less (size limited by gallery requirements).

The tour time is 2.5 hours, 2 hours of which is supported by the guide.

The two tables overleaf give the options for the schedule. Schedule option 1 gives the schedule on the weekend, where the time replaces that week’s class.

Option 1 is the preferred option because it has less potential for disrupting any other student/class schedules, and also gives them the greatest flexibility.

Transport will be provided by the university’s bus service from Sha He campus to the North Gate[1] of the 798 Arts District and back.

[1] North Gate is on Jiuxiaoqiao North road, which intersects with Caihong rd., where the tour buses park while waiting.

Staff/supervision

Matt Merefield is the course leader, and he will take responsibility for the field trip, including student’s tours, liaison with the tour guide/gallery managers, student safety and welfare, and transport.

Sabrina from Art Space studio will accompany the tour giving information on the art exhibitions and their works (schedule permitting). Sabrina brings her contemporary arts expertise as well as great spoken English communication skills and a youth perspective which will greatly enhance student engagement.

Additionally, the class monitors will be asked to assist with arrangements as required.

Students can bring lunch to eat on the bus or at the Arts district. For the weekend schedule tour, students may purchase lunch at their own cost. There are many cafés, several of which are adjacent to the UCCU building.

Listening and comprehension: a disagreement

Note, sometimes in spoken words tests (for example, IELTS), you will be asked to talk about things that are unfamiliar (for example, they might be common in America or England but not here).

And sometimes the questions will just seem strange (they might be something you wouldn’t normally think about or seem to show an unusual way of thinking).

But you will still need to talk about them (for assessment.) The following exercise might seem a bit like that (it is from an advanced level IELTS style book).

Look at the 6 statements above and discuss

Podcasts due on or before June 14

Aim: to produce a podcast report or review in your teams

Assessment basis: the podcast should be interesting, demonstrate strong critical thinking and be information

English expression: It should be well-expressed. with an appropriately rich vocabulary (it doesn’t have to be grammatically perfect, but if there are so many errors that it distracts from your communication then you will lose marks)

Style/tone: it may be serious, lighthearted or even funny. Any style or tone is fine, but you will be judged on how well the the style works.

Individual contributions to the team: Each team member will be judge on her/his contribution. Each person should speak between 3-6 minutes (over the whole of the podcast)

Formats and submitting:

MP4 or similar audio files will be fine for audio. Any common video format should be fine too (I will ask for your help if there are any playback/recording issues)

Submit to me via wechat by or before June8

include the transcript (as a word doc) with the speakers’ names/initials at the beginning of their sentences, like

No, Not Everything Is Racist

But Donald Trump is.

By William Saletan

Jan 12, 2018, 4:43 PM

I don’t like to accuse people of racism. That word is used far too often, unjustly, to smear good men and women. It has been thrown at House Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. John McCain, former Gov. Mitt Romney, and other decent conservatives. It has been attributed to anyone who defends law enforcement or opposes a government program. When everyone on the right is a white nationalist or white supremacist, these terms lose their meaning.

But Donald Trump is a racist. He meets what Ryan himself once called the “textbook definition” of racism. Trump singles out particular ethnic, racial, and religious groups for suspicion. He holds all members of these groups responsible for the misdeeds of other members. He casts aspersions on individuals based on creed and background. And he explicitly advocates discrimination. If these behaviors don’t define bigotry, nothing does.

Let’s give Trump the benefit of the doubt in every case where his conduct could be explained, even implausibly, by something other than prejudice. Housing discrimination by his father’s company? Young Donald wasn’t directly involved. The Central Park Five? He thought they were guilty. Questioning Barack Obama’s birthplace? Trump just wanted to be thorough. His failure to denounce David Duke? Trump couldn’t hear the question. Calling the removal of Confederate statues an attack on “our culture”? He meant we should own our history. Calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas”? He’s being ironic. Hounding NFL players who kneel? He feels strongly about the national anthem.

Set aside all of that, and you’re still left with four patterns that can’t be explained away.

This behavior has continued in office. During an Oval Office meeting last summer, according to the New York Times, Trump complained that Haitians coming to the United States “all have AIDS.” He also warned that people from Nigeria, if they were allowed into our country, would never “go back to their huts.” Six weeks ago, Trump retweeted messages from a hate group, which by their plain language (“Muslim destroys a statue of Virgin Mary!” “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!”) sought to incite anger against all Muslims.

The White House denied the Times report about Haitians and Nigerians. But now there’s confirmation, from a Democratic senator, a Republican senator, and others who attended or were briefed, that Trump made similar remarks in an Oval Office meeting with lawmakers on Thursday. During a back-and-forth about migrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and Africa, Trump fumed: “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He specifically asked, “Why do we need more Haitians?” He demanded that Congress “take them out” of a list of immigrant populations temporarily allowed to stay in the United States. Instead, he said the United States should accept more people from countries such as Norway.

What Trump is proposing, as sketched in his own tweets, is not a merit-based system. A merit-based system would accept or reject applicants based their own merits. Trump is saying that applicants should be accepted or rejected based on country of origin. He’s saying that the individual should be judged by the group. If you’re Haitian, you’re out.

That’s bigotry. It’s not some left-wing activist’s definition of bigotry. It’s the textbook definition. And while quotas by nationality are common in immigration policy, it’s hard to explain why Trump thinks and talks this way on so many other issues, not just about foreigners but about Americans. He has been doing it for years to every group with whom he doesn’t identify: blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Seventh-day Adventists, Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans, Arab Americans, Korean Americans, and women.

A president who keeps saying bigoted things and pushing bigoted ideas, despite repeated warnings, is a bigot. A party that continues to excuse him is a bigoted party. And a country that accepts him is a bigoted country. Don’t be that party. Don’t be that country.

One more thing

You depend on Slate for sharp, distinctive coverage of the latest developments in politics and culture. Now we need to ask for your support.

Our work is more urgent than ever and is reaching more readers—but online advertising revenues don’t fully cover our costs, and we don’t have print subscribers to help keep us afloat. So we need your help. If you think Slate’s work matters, become a Slate Plus member. You’ll get exclusive members-only content and a suite of great benefits—and you’ll help secure Slate’s future.

Americans are more likely to be attacked by far-right terrorists than Islamists

Remember how Donald Trump used to accuse the Democrats of political correctness on the subject of terrorism? “These are radical Islamic terrorists and she won’t even mention the word and nor will President Obama,” declaimed the then Republican presidential candidate in his second debate against Hillary Clinton in October 2016.

But what about Trump’s own political correctness? Over the course of his 14 months in office, the president has pointedly refused to use the term “white supremacist terrorist”. He has turned a blind eye to a wave of shootings, stabbings and bombings carried out not by radicalised Muslims but by radicalised white men. He has ignored the fact – documented in a range of studies – that Americans are much more likely to be the victims of a “white supremacist terrorist” than a “radical Islamic terrorist”. (According to the Investigative Fund, an independent journalism organisation, “far-right plots and attacks outnumber Islamist incidents by almost two to one.”)

Don’t take my word for it. “Donald Trump is setting us free,” wrote a jubilant Andrew Anglin, founder of a neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer, last summer. “It’s fair to say that if the Trump team is not listening to us directly (I assume they are), they are thinking along very similar lines.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate groups and extremists, agrees. “If 2016 was the year of white supremacists being electrified by the rise of Donald Trump, his inauguration in January sent them into a frenzy,” it noted. “They believed they finally had a sympathiser in the White House and an administration that would enact policies to match their anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and racist ideas.” The SPLC pointed out that “hate crimes in the six largest US cities were up 20 per cent from 2016”.

According to the Extremist Crime Database, the far right carried out nine fatal attacks in the US in 2017. In February of that year, Adam Purinton shot two Indian men, one of whom was killed, at a restaurant in Kansas, reportedly yelling “get out of my country” and “terrorist” before opening fire.

In March 2017, James H Jackson, an avid reader of the Daily Stormer, fatally stabbed an elderly African-American man in New York, after travelling from Baltimore to kill as many black men as possible and “make a statement”, according to the authorities.

In May, Jeremy Joseph Christian, an admirer of both Trump and the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was charged with stabbing two men to death on a train in Portland, Oregon, after they tried to prevent him from harassing two female passengers who appeared to be Muslim.

In August, James Fields Jr, a proud neo-Nazi, was charged with killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer after allegedly driving his car into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia, which had gathered to protest against a white supremacist rally. (“You also had some very fine people on both sides,” Trump would later remark .)

In December, a 17-year-old boy who had mowed a swastika into the grass of a community field was charged with murdering his girlfriend’s parents after they objected to their teenage daughter’s relationship with the youth because of his neo-Nazi views.

Yet hardly any of these fatal attacks by radicalised white men dominated the news headlines in the US in the same way that shootings or bombings by radicalised Muslims tend to. Aside from the killing of Heyer in Charlottesville, how many of these incidents had you even heard of? Researchers at Georgia State University found that terrorist attacks “by Muslim perpetrators received, on average, 449 per cent more coverage than other attacks”. Muslims were responsible for 12.4 per cent of the terror attacks in the US between 2011 and 2015 yet received 41.4 per cent of the news coverage. Is it any wonder that when most Americans think of terrorists they picture brown, not white, skins?

“Terrorism is one of the only areas where white people do most of the work and get none of the credit,” joked the comedian Ken Cheng in a viral tweet. But this is no joking matter for the Trump administration. Upon coming to office last year, White House officials briefed Reuters that they wanted to “revamp and rename a US government programme designed to counter all violent ideologies so that it focuses solely on Islamist extremism… and would no longer target groups such as white supremacists.”

By June, the administration had announced it would be revoking federal funding for Life After Hate, a non-profit dedicated to deradicalising right-wing extremists, and a project by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that was supposed to counter both violent Islamists and white supremacists.

Yet in May last year, an intelligence bulletin prepared by the FBI and the department for homeland security was obtained by Foreign Policy magazine, which warned that “white supremacists had already carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group over the past 16 years”. It concluded that white supremacists “likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year”.

And so they have. Just as George W Bush ignored intelligence about a growing threat from al-Qaeda in his first year in office, Trump spent 2017 ignoring warnings about the “persistent threat of lethal violence” from white supremacists.

“To solve a problem you have to be able to state what the problem is or at least, say the name,” declared Trump in his October 2016 debate with Clinton. Maybe, just for once, the president should take his own advice.

today we going to talk about Donald Trump’s political discourse, the ideologies it is based on and the effects of some of that discourse in society.

First a few loose/broad definitions

Discourse: a way of talking about things (political discourse, a way of talking about politics)

Counter-discourse: an oppositional way of talking about something.

Ideology: a social belief system

hegemony: dominance by consent. A discourse is hegemonic when most people believe in it/agree with it. A politics is hegemonic when it rules by majority consent/with majority support. An ideology is hegemonic when most people believe in it.

Myth: imagined form of reality.

For example, The American Dream is a myth, containing the idea that anyone can make it in America if they really try (we talked about this last semester).

A myth is not necessarily false, in fact it isn’t really accurate to talk about a myth being true or false. The American Dream true or false? is a nonsensical question precisely because myths are imagined; the myth itself is not trading in empirical facts subject to truth claims and their measurement.

The valency of a myth, the degree to which it is live and meaningful for people, however, does bear a relationship to facts.

Q: Is the American Dream really meaningful for American citizens in general?

A1: Well, yes, if you mean its an aspiration that many American believe in. Studies suggest many Americans continue to believe in the idea of the American Dream (I can have my own rags to riches success).

A2: But no, if you measure it in terms of the degree to which people doing realize their American dream. Why? Because since the 1980s American has become increasingly inequitable.

The chances of people progressing from rags to riches have got smaller and smaller.

The chances of a small minority of very wealthy people dominating society by virtue of the power gained through their wealth, of arranging society to maintain their power (keeping thins radically inequitable) has increased and become entrenched.

How do they do that?

Well, they use their money to influence politics. Wealthy individuals like the Koch Brothers make massive donations to political parties or individual politicians and those politicians support their interests. They pay consultants to lobby politicians to vote in accordance with their interests.

So for example, the wealth behind the gas and oil industry has a massive effect on American politics and society.

Q: Should America recognize the dangers of global warming and enact a radical green revolution right now?

Q: So will they enact a Green Revolution, changing power and transport to renewables?

A: Well, not Donald Trump and the Republican party, no.

Q: Why not?

A: Not because they don’t believe in the reality of global warming (Trump previously admitted he did, before running for President). But because they owe a lot of their political power to the wealth and influence of the gas and oil lobby.

How do citizens read/understand political discourse.

Citizens access the discourse of politicians through the media (including, for example, tv news, newspapers in print and online, social media like Twitter).

The mainstream media is dominant in America, and is owned by just a few very wealthy individuals (like Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner). They way the media asks its questions/tells its stories of or about politicians is dominated by their views. Often, in recent times, that has meant that the questions are asked or the stories told in a way that supports Donald Trump and his discourse claim the he is “Making America Great Again”.

There are also many media outlets not owned by these wealthy Trump supporting individuals. We could say they are representing a counter discourse: something like, “Trump is Making America Worse Again”. Donald Trump counters this counter-discourse in a variety of ways. One of those is the claim that the counter-discourse is ‘fake news’.

Q: How does this work in practice?

A:Let’s take the example of the Paris Climate Agreement. Barack Obama signed it in 2016, thus requiring America to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, along with many other countries. Donald Trump withdrew Americas signature, thus allowing America to continue with high greenhouse gas emissions. When he was criticized for damaging the environment by un-signing, he argued that global warming is ‘fake news’.

Making American Great Again: some strands of Trump’s political discourse

Mexicans

“When Mexico sends it people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people” (Trump, 2016).

Trump blames undocumented (Mexican) immigrants for “the American family that loses their jobs, their income, or their loved one”.

At rallies and in TV interviews, Trump charged that Gonzalo Curiel, the Indiana-born federal judge presiding over the Trump University fraud case, was incorrigibly biased against him because “we’re building a wall. He’s a Mexican.”

Trump retweeted messages from a hate group, which by their plain language (“Muslim destroys a statue of Virgin Mary!” “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!”) sought to incite anger against all Muslims.

Trump complained that Haitians coming to the United States “all have AIDS.”

He also warned that people from Nigeria, if they were allowed into our country, would never “go back to their huts.”

Trevor Noah responds to the President

During a discussion about migrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and Africa, Trump fumed: “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He specifically asked, “Why do we need more Haitians?” He demanded that Congress “take them out” of a list of immigrant populations temporarily allowed to stay in the United States. Instead, he said the United States should accept more people from countries such as Norway.

When asked to criticize the KKK leader for his racism Trump refused to comment

People joining with the Charlottesville white supremacist rioters

‘Some very fine people”

Discussion 1. Characterize Trump’s political discourse

Using these examples, how would you characterize these examples of Trump’s political discourse.

2. If these statements indicate ways of making America Great again, what kind of America is trump trying to make?

Discussion 2. Discussing American terrorism

1. What kind of terrorist threats do you think America suffers from? Which kind of terrorist threats are most dangerous? How dangerous are they compared to other forms of violent death and injury in America?

2. What do you think of Trump’s discourse in relation to the threat of terrorism?

3. Now read the articles I will send you on Wechat. Consider your answers to q1. and q2. Is your opinion the same, or has it changed?

Discussion 3: find a topic for your podcasts discussions on the theme of representation.

Time permitting today you should work in your small groups and begin to choose a topic for your end of year assessment piece.

You are going to provide an informative and critically reflective (not just descriptive) discussion of the way something is represented. Your range of choices for a topic are unlimited, but I will give you guidance on whether an idea seems workable or not once you’ve developed your idea (or ideas).

Three themes that we’ve talked about so far in the semester are race, gender and class. You might want to use them for discussing your specific text/object/event of discussion. For example, you could discuss how women are represented in games, or how class is represented in Chinese romance movies, or how race/class is represented in American movies about Chinese/Asian people. You don’t have to use these categories of analysis, but they might be good to work with as tey provide a lot to talk about.

Each speaker should contribute between 3-6 minutes (no longer than 6 minutes please) to your discussion.

You can send me the recordings and the transcript on wechat, by or before June 14.

My courses have taken a Cultural studies approach drawing on IELTS methodology (for vocabulary, grammar, listening and comprehension exercises). Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary approach that draws on post-structuralist and post-Marxist theory and approaches language as a broad range of representational systems.

This is teaching not just conversational English (as in, for example, a pure IELTS course) but facilitating a reflexive engagement with language as culture, and an understanding of the way that language works in Anglophone culture and society (primarily America, England, Australia).

My courses use a range of popular culture texts, such as American and Chinese movies and tv series, documentaries, newspaper articles, social media items (for example, avatars, selfies) as content for students to develop their spoken word skills. Each semester has a learning theme, the content and methodology of which is aimed at facilitating student’s ability to express complex ideas fluently.

The courses facilitate learning through practice, encouraging students to engage in critically informed discussion appropriate to their level (undergraduate) and fields of study (for example, English majors). The courses require students to do the readings and viewings and thereby immerse themselves in Anglophone culture as preparation for their class discussions.

The freshwomen course work progresses from individual reviewing presentations to team reviews and reports. The sophomores course begins with individual debate presentations and progresses to team podcasts. Over the two years the course facilitates students’ development from individual self-expression to expressing and exchanging a point of view within a group.

The cultural texts chosen are designed to be relevant to and interesting for the age group, and thus aid learning through emotionally and actively engaging in learning. Part of this learning strategy involves the use of materials and methods that cross-over with other English/humanities studies (for example, reviewing and debating, using novels studied in literature courses). This cultural studies methodology is particularly appropriate for undergraduate humanities/social science majors.

Cultural Studies + IELTS

IELTS exercises form an important part of the course and are useful. But the Cultural Studies+IELTS method should produce a better result than a pure IELTS method because it is a targeted form of immersive learning:

Cross-over learning works by building on students’ immersion in their field of studies (involving related courses as well as Anglophone and Chinese popular culture).

IELTS works best when the student is immersed in the social environment of the language. For example, if I am learning Chinese and live in Tianjin, I can practice the street directions class in a real environment as I navigate the city (for example, on the bicycle on the streets, via train, subway, buses, pedestrian walkways). I reinforce the class learning through having to use the words and phrases in the real environment, and that maximizes my learning cathecting (emotional or active engagement with the concepts and words).

But if I don’t have that environment to practice in, my learning (cathecting) will be significantly less. In contrast, by using a cultural studies methodology we are bringing the immersive cultural/academic environment to the students. We can’t take them to New York physically, but we can immerse them in that city/other Anglophone places via cultural texts like movies etc.

Nimen Hao,

welcome to today’s class.

We are going to work through some exercises and readings on weather, global warming, climate change and recycling. Most are taken from Chapter 8b titled “Recycle your Rubbish” (pages 62-63) in your Face2Face intermediate book.

For homework, you can begin preparation work for our speed debates by beginning to choose the topics.

Exercise 1. Explaining Weather terms

See if you can tell us what the following words mean.

A storm (adj. stormy)A hurricane (or typhoon)

Thunder Lightning A gale A tornado (U.S) A twister

A heatwave A BlizzardA flood A tsunami

An earthquake A drought A landslide

A shower Humid Fog (adj. foggy) Smog (adj. smoggy)

Exercise 2. Working in your small groups, discuss the following (in English).

Have there been any stories about bad weather or natural disasters in the news recently? If so, where? What happened?

Have you ever experienced extremely bad weather? If so, tell the group what happened.

Do you think the weather where you live has changed since you were a young child? If so, how?

Exercise 3. Your weather words.

Take five minutes to write five weather words that are connected to you. Tell us why you chose them.

Reading 1. “FAQs:Global warming and climate change”

Let’s do the reading below. First, make sure you understand these words

(we’ll use the Cambridge University dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org)

Atmosphere Greenhouse gasses Gas Oil Coal Climate Ice-cap

Gas: a substance in a form like air, that is neither liquid nor solid; it can increase in size to fill any container

“FAQs: Global warming and climate change”

1. Heat from the sun is held in the earth’s atmosphere by natural greenhouse gasses. These keep the planet warm and without them the average temperature would be -18celcius instead of 14celcius. However, more and more heat is being kept in the atmosphere because of man-made greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide (Co2), which is produced by burning oil, gas and coal. This global warming is already causing changes in the weather all over the world.

2. Since the 1970s, average global temperatures have risen by about 0.6celcius and many scientists believe that more extreme weather conditions have been caused by climate change in recent years.

For example, New Orleans was hit by a huge hurricane in 2005. Many people were killed and thousands were made homeless.

3. Experts believe that more and more places are going to be affected by climate change in the future. And as the ice caps at the North and South Poles melt and sea levels rise further, many towns and villages near the coast will be flooded. This is a frightening thought because more than half the world’s population lives near the coast.

4. A lot has been written about what governments and businesses should do to slow down global warming. However, there’s also a lot we can do to save energy at home. For example, always turn off tvs, dvd players and computers. Machines use 70% as much electricity on standby as when they’re being used.

Exercise 4. Let’s fill in the gaps in the following sentences with one word.

1 Without natural greenhouse gases, the earth would be 32C …. than it is.

2 Because the earth is getting hotter, the …. is changing.

4 Sea levels are …. because the polar ice caps are disappearing.

5 We can save …. by turning off machines instead of leaving them on standby.

Listening and comprehension: the rate of change

Watch and listen to the following short clips from the BBC documentary, Climate Change: the Facts.

Clip. 1. The rate of change so far 3.30-4.30

Clip. 2. How much worse? The predictions 33.50-37.00

Clip. 3 What has to be done? Energy. 42.00-4315

Exercise 5. Let’s discuss the following questions.

Did any of the information in the documentary clips surprise you? If so, what was it?

What things could China do to help save the planet from climate change? Who is responsible for the changes needed?

Exercise 6. Active or Passive expressions?

i) First, put the verbs in brackets in their correct active or passive forms.

a) Do you think global warming …. (take) seriously enough by the governments around the world?

b) What ……….(done) in your country in the last few years to deal with climate change?

c) Which parts of the country …. (damage) because of climate change?

d) Do you think governments should … (do) more to stop people using their cars so much?

e) Do you think the problem of climate change can only …………….. (solve) by governments and multinational companies?

ii) Now discuss the questions in your small groups (questions a-e).

Reading 2. A talk about recycling

Let’s read the following discussion from Face2Face about recycling . There are three characters, Val, James and Pete (they’re English characters).

Val: Hi James.

James: Hello Val. Hi Pete. Come in.

Val: Ready to go?

James: Not quite. Do you want some coffee? I’ve just put the kettle on.

Val: Yes, sure. You get ready, we’ll make it.

James: OK. Oh, there’s a bit of pasta there too if you’re hungry.

Val: Er, no thanks, we’ve just eaten … Well, I’ve found some coffee, but there’s no sugar.

Pete: There’s some in that jar by the toaster.

Val: Oh yes.

Pete: Hmm. There’s enough milk for two cups, but not enough for three.

Val: It’s OK, I’ll have it black.

James: Can someone feed the cat? There are plenty of tins of cat food in the cupboard.

Val: Sure. Here you go kitty. James, where’s your recycling box?

James: Haven’t got one. Why?

Val: Oh, everyone should have a recycling box. Too much rubbish is just thrown away when a lot of it could be recycled.

Pete: Well, you’re not the only one. Hardly any stuff is recycled in this country. Did you know that Germany recycles over 50% of its rubbish, but in the UK it’s about 15%.

James: Hmm, that’s not much is it.

Val: No, and there aren’t enough recycling bins in the country. With stuff like … er, glass, for example, we only recycle 25%, but in Switzerland they recycle about 90%!

James: Yes, I see what you mean. I hadn’t really thought about it.

Val: Well, it’s never too late to start. And there’s a lot of stuff in the bin tha could be recycled. Look, there’s loads of paper and several plastic bottles. The bottles can be made into supermarket bags and the paper can be made into toilet paper — and, oh, those empty cat food tins can be recycled and the metal could be used for making fridge parts.

James: Wow, you know a lot about this.

Pete: Yes, well, there’s plenty of information on it these days isn’t there? But it’s hard changing people’s habits in this country. People are naturally lazy, I think.

Val: Yes, too many people just don’t bother. But the government should do more too. In Germany people have to recycle their rubbish … its the law. They should do that here too, I think.

James: Yes, I suppose you’r right. I’ve only got a few friends who recycle things. But in the future, I’ll try to recycle what I can.

Pete: Come on, we’re late.

James: Let me get my coat. Won’t be a second.

Val: We made a little progress there.

Exercise 7. Choose the correct answers for the following questions

1 Val and Pete have something/don’t have anything to eat.

2 James recycles some/doesn’t recycle any of his rubbish.

3 The UK recycles 50/15% of its rubbish.

4 25/90% of glass in Switzerland is recycled.

5 Parts for fridges can be made from plastic bottles/tins.

6 James is/isn’t going to recycle his rubbish in the future.

Exercise 8. Look at the sentences below and choose the correct words or phrases.

1.There are no/any recycling bins in my street.

2. I probably drink too much/too many coffee.

3. I got too many/hardlyany sleep last night.

4. I know afew/a little words in other languages.

5. I watched a bit of/much tv last night.

6. I always have many/plenty of time to do my homework.

7. I haven’t got enough/several money to go on holiday.

8. I’ve been to some/any interesting places.

9. I probably eat too much/too many sweets.

Exercise 9. Tianjin: Hao bu Hao?

Work in your small groups again. Using the words/phrases below, tell each other three good and four bad things about Tianjin. After you have worked in your groups we will have a class discussion.

recycling bins rubbish traffic pollution cycle lanes public transport

places to park parks shops cinemas art galleries

places to go at night noise at night

Homework: Individual Debate preparation.

Choose or make up some topics to debate.

Read my guidance on preparing your debate, including issues of unity, coherence and evidence, as well as grammar.

You can choose your own topic. Some possible topics we’ve discussed so far include

A. Women work harder than men, for less reward.

B. My home town is a better city than Tianjin.

C. Chinese people are much healthier than American people.

D. Our youthful generation is much healthier than the older generation.

E. It’s much better to stay and live in China than to migrate overseas.

F. The national government should fix the problems of global warming, not individuals and communities.